Yesterday was the last day of school for the 2008-2009 school year. Now we get a week off before starting the summer school program. I'm not quite finished with my checkout forms, but all I need is my final room and book inventory stuff. I also want to give my room a good defragging, since I had piles of old papers from not just this year, but the previous year as well. I got about halfway through yesterday, and I'll finish up this morning so I'm ready for next year.

I'm not exactly sure what all I'll be doing this summer. I will have a week-long meeting with a state committee that is reviewing the state standards for English Language Learners, and I'm pretty excited about that. I've been grumbling about the standards since they came out, but I've grumbled even more about the whole "jump-through-the-hoops" the state is requiring of these children. I don't think we'll be addressing the latter, at least not officially, but anything, however small, that I can do to help our students succeed is okay with me.

After my week on the committee, I will be working with incoming freshmen to introduce them to what high school is like. Another teacher, Tammy, will be team-teaching the one-week course with me. I was supposed to work with her for two weeks, but this committee thing came up and as it is a great privilege for someone from my remote district to be invited on it I chose to miss the first week. Sorry again, Tammy!

Then I'll have a few weeks that I can use to visit family and friends before heading off for San Diego the first week of July. I need to call/write/email/contact my cousins there and see if I can drop by for part of the time to visit. I'll be a delegate at the Regional Assembly for the NEA (teacher's union), and it is my first time to go to a national type meeting. I'm totally excited, even though sometimes I take a stand diametrically opposed to the majority of my union on some of the issues that come up.

After the RA, I get to have a couple more weeks of vacation time before we have to report back to work. We start back at work the last week of July. In today's economy, I'm just glad that I was given a contract and can continue to work!

Today I was supposed to get evaluated (a yearly thing for "continuing teachers" [i.e., those of us with more than 3 years in-district]. I went to the Asst. Principal and we arranged he'd come visit my second hour class and watch me work with the kiddos. I even produced a clean copy of my lesson plans for him and all was swell and cool and all those good adjectives.

A winter storm moved in last night, making today a delayed start day. I thought, "Ah well, that just means he won't see a whole 55 minute class. Instead he'll see a 35 minute class. No problem." Then about 30 minutes ago he called me and said he was cancelling all of today's evaluations, and could he come on another day.

So instead of watching me teach my kiddos vocabulary, he'll get to watch me teach them grammar. I'm introducing sentence diagramming! It'll be cool! Well, I think so, anyway. At least it requires a lot more of me than just handing out worksheets and letting the students do their thing. :D

At any rate, the lesson I had planned for today will have to be adjusted a bit for the shorter periods. After 20+ years of teaching, I've become pretty good at adapting on the fly as needed.

Water off this duck's back.

At least we won't have to use our one remaining snow day.

The principal just got on the intercom and announced that we (teachers) are not to allow students passes anywhere except emergencies to the nurse's office or if the child is being checked out by a parent or guardian. Just for today only.

Makes me wonder what's up.

The thing is, I've noticed a lot more tagging going on (they tagged just outside my classroom door on Monday, for one thing) and someone burned a bandana of a certain color in between the storm doors leading out the back side of the building. The kiddos also seem a bit more tense, like they know something's going down (I trust the students to know better than I do what's going on!).

I know of at least four fights that were pre-empted this week, too.

So I'm wondering if we're in for yet another lockdown, or at least a lockdown drill. (We've had 3 lockdowns so far since September.) Time was when school was *the* safe haven for students. Now it's a prime place for some disgruntled man, woman or child to set out to make a point, however crazy.

Sigh.

Anyway, to cheer myself up, I went and did another quiz...

You Communicate With Your Ears

You love conversations, both as a listener and a talker. What people say is important to you, and you're often most affected by words, not actions. You love to hear complements from others. And when you're upset, you often talk to yourself. Music is very important to you. It's difficult to find you without your iPod.

I talk to myself because sometimes I'm the only person around to talk to!

My heart and my prayers go out to those families in the Amish community where a crazy man shot 5 little girls at their school. That's like the third school shooting in only a few weeks. Schools used to be safe places to send your children.

What's amazing is I live in an area where pretty much every family has weapons of some sort, and yet so far we've not had any incidents involving weapons here. We did have a 2-hour lockdown while the authorities searched for drugs (caught 8 kids in possession, one apparently in possession of heroin, the others just marijuana) last week. They brought in drug dogs, even. But no weapons-related incidents. Most of our kids make do with fists and insults, it seems.

I hate to place the blame in any one place, because the ills of society are multudinous and to do that would over-simplify the causes. Still, one can't help but think that a goodly portion of the problem is the breakdown of the extended family, and even the nuclear family. I'd say a good 80% of my students live in either one- or no-parent families; many reside with aunts or grandmothers, some with an elder sibling. One year I had two young men who were all they had for each other. One was 18, one was 15, and both had issues with learning disabilities. They were both almost constantly in trouble with one thing or another, and I honestly don't know what happened to them. They just stopped coming to school.

As a teacher, my heart breaks each time I hear of someone harming a child. I see them come to my classes from homes where they have no running water, limited electricity, no phone lines...and yet most of them manage to overcome these issues and become fully functioning, productive members of the society. If I had a magic wand and could wave it to remove all their difficulties, would they be stronger or weaker for it?

I've been doing my class assessments, and I watch them struggle to understand and perform, and I wish I could take them all in and let them know they are important, they are loved, they have a sparkling future in store for them. They get so discouraged, then hide that discouragement in an I-don't-care attitude.

It breaks my heart.

I'm trying something with my students, to see what sort of imaginations they have. I gave them three "starting sentences" and asked them to choose one of them and make a one-page story (about 200 words) starting with that sentence.

Today's sentences were:

1. Everything was calm and peaceful, when suddenly...
2. Why? Why? Why does this always happen to me?
3. I just won fourteen million dollars!

( One of the better ones... )

I'm recommending he be moved out of my ESL class and into a regular English class for next year. His skills are far and away above what the majority of my students have.

( One of the less good ones )

It amazes me that I can have two students with such a range of skills in one class. And it isn't as if the second is horrible as far as ideas go. He just needs more work on his writing skills.

I worked a bit late tonight getting my gradebook updated. The kiddos get their grade checks tomorrow and I didn't want to be having to do it frantically at the last minute.

Yes, I am a procrastinator, thank you for asking.

Parent conferences are next week, too. So that's another reason to get caught up. Gotta be accurate for when the parents/guardians come to check on their kids.

For those who may not know what grade checks are...Every three weeks students get a report sent home if they are failing a course. If they fail two grade checks in a row, they are ineligible for any extracurricular activities (like baseball, wrestling, track, drama trips, ROTC trips, etc.) That's if they fail just one class two checks in a row. However, should they have a failing grade on one check and then a passing grade on the second, they can still play.

You guessed it...some kids are wise to that so they fail one, manage to pull a D on the next, fail the next, then D, then fail, then D...ad nauseum.

Frankly, if a student turns in all his or her work, I will pass that student, even if the work is not all that great. I do offer some of my assignments as a passing grade if they just try it, though certainly I don't allow that on just any assignment.

Anyhoo, I've stayed late tonight, so now I can with a clear conscience play games tonight. Go me!

Today I had my freshmen/sophomores looking at one of Shakespeare's sonnets (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day) and got them to look at the iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme and lo! some of them got a clue!

Of course, I had to explain to them some of the figures of speech, which to my ears seemed to take away from the beauty of Shakespeare's word choices, but if it helps them internalize the poem better, I guess I can live with that.

They did laugh (as they were supposed to) when I emphasized the iambic rhythm for the first quatrain:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Then they had an activity where they came up with other comparisons one might make when speaking about someone they loved. I have yet to read what they came up with, but I expect to be amused.

So I was all set to down to Phoenix and be at my uncle's memorial service. I went to bed as usual on Thursday night, and when I woke Friday morning it was snowing. The snow was light, and I figured, well, it wouldn't last long...I could still make it out of our valley and over the mountain.

About 9:15 am an announcment came over the intercom that we were having early dismissal because they wanted to be sure that the students would make it home before the worst of the storm hit. I thought, "Oh oh...that can't be good." I had already asked for bereavement leave (to leave at noon) so I could get to Phoenix in good time, so I still wasn't worried--much.

At noon I was walking back to my apartment in a virtual blizzard. I learned later the winds were gusting up to 60 mph, with an average wind speed in the 30s. So I thought, "Well, it's moving fast--it could be out of here by 3:00. If it is, I could probably still get to Phoenix."

I turned on the radio, and lo and behold, the roads were closed. I double checked with a phone call to the department of transportation, and they were recommending only emergency travel.

So I called my aunt. As soon as she heard me, she said, "I hope you're not still planning to come to the service!"

"That's why I'm calling. I can't get out of town--they've closed the roads to all but emergencies."

"Oh, good! I was afraid you'd try to come, and I didn't want you to chance it."

So I didn't get to go to my uncle's service. Instead, I spent Saturday watching DVDs and doing laundry and cleaning up my apartment a bit.

Now, today, the school is on a delayed schedule. I guess they announced it on the "local" radio (local originating 60 miles away), but I was watching the news on TV and I didn't see anything about late start or anything. Lots about other schools in the area either closed or on a delay, but not us. So I came at my usual time (7:00) and started getting ready. About 7:45, I went into the halls...no kids. I went down to the front office. No staff. I went to the cafeteria. A few kids, and the cafeteria workers were setting up breakfast for them.

So I have a couple of hours to grade papers and get caught up. I like this. I just wish I had known before I got here.

I don't usually tell my students my first name. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. Still, it's not hard for them to find out what it is. We teachers have lanyards which hold our school IDs and they have our names on them in bright yellow, so they see that all the time.

All that to say this...one of my boys asked me what my name was, and I just held out my lanyard. He said "Carlo? Your name is Carlo?"

"Look again. The L is on the end, not the O."

"Carlos?"

"No S."

One of the others said, "It's Carol, stupid!"

"Carol? Is that your name? Carol Bartholomew?

"No, but it's what people call me." (I managed to say this with a straight face, mind you.)

"Really?"

Sometimes it's really hard to keep a straight face. Actually, he's one of the few students who doesn't struggle with my last name.

In other news, a cold front is approaching, offering about a 20% chance of rain or snow showers. We need the moisture, so I hope it turns out to be higher than 20%.

This week is shot. Monday, of course, was a holiday (Presidents' Day), yesterday we actually were able to have a normal day, today we have 5 minutes taken off of each class period so we can have a "rah rah go boys' basketball team" assembly at the end of the day, tomorrow we have AIMS practice (getting ready for the state exit exams) and Friday we have no classes so we can go support our boys at our state's Final Four.

AIMS practice days we have shortened periods to make room for an hour of practice on the types of questions that will be asked on the AIMS test. Next week we have our reading and writing portions, and then in April the students get their math and science portions (heh, almost typed 'potions' there).

So basically that makes this week pretty useless for covering what I had originally planned.

Why bother making lesson plans?

And just because the Olympics are almost over...

You Are Curling

What you lack in athleticism, you make up for in concentration. And while curling isn't much more of a sport than bowling, you *can* win a gold medal for it!